Posts by Dave 126 10843 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Jul 2010
What it might have looked like if Starck had had free reign:
http://www.1designperday.com/2009/08/08/3-creative-yachts-designs-by-starck-more/
I can only assume that Starck had responsibility for some of the interior fittings and decor, though not on the bridge judging from the photos. Maybe photos of his contribution haven't been released to smack him on the wrist for disclosing his involvement earlier in the year?
from link:
"One More Thing
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I haven't read it, but thank you for drawing it my attention. Prior to your post, the earliest story I knew of along these lines was Arthur C Clarke's Dial F for Frankenstein (1964) in which the worldwide telephone exchange network becomes so complicated that it develops conciousness, published eighteen years after A Logic Named Joe. Cheers!
The theme of emergent intelligence is revisited by Alfred Bester in a 1975 novel The Computer Connection, a.k.a Extro (its okay, but do read Bester's The Stars My Destination first, it's absolutely superb). Many of my generation are perhaps more familiar with William Gibson's Neuromancer or the Japanese animation The Ghost in the Shell.
Isaac Asimov of course explored ideas around asking computers questions in a series of stories about computer called Multivac (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multivac) from 1955 onwards, including The Last Question (1956). He didn't, IIRC, mention prostitutes... that's more of a Brian Aldiss thing.
Purpley-blue? I couldn't see it. I must get my monitor calibrated!
d'oh! I've just remembered I use a program called F.Lux to alter my screen's white balance according to the time of day. It's good, and lessens Chromes 'white flash of eye death' between web pages, but obviously does nothing for colour accuracy- though it can be toggled.
Nice touch on the belt and braces colour descriptions though!
My Dell is a few years old now, still going strong. I don't use it for gaming, since it gets far too hot when both the CPU and GPU are running high. However, CAD doesn't always make the same demands on the GPU as gaming, and even at 100% CPU whilst rendering it doesn't get hot enough to throttle itself. I like it. It was good value and hasn't yet let me down.
I wouldn't buy another Dell though, because they no longer offer the 1920 x 1200 screen this one has.
The most interesting comment from the man Mr Pott interviewed concerned his frustration with the poor resolution offered by most laptops these days. This has been a common theme on Reg forums too.
>Why would I want GPU acceleration for a media centre **server** ? All the thing has to do is stream the files to >other boxes that you use to view the videos.
Some servers can transcode media files as they stream them... I don't know if this is something the GPU is called in to assist with?
But yeah, my mate uses his Mac Mini as a HTPC, since it's nice and quiet. I was hoping that he would use it for his ongoing vinyl transcription project, since his FireWire soundcard just works with it and OSX's CoreAudio seems better behaved than Window's Sound Mapper (which keeps trying to displace ASIO, which in any case is limited to a few channels). Alas, he's a masochist and is attached to piece of software on his XP PC, and the differences in the OSX version confuse him. He's also a sadist, since it's me who gets called in to to troubleshoot problems...
Since Apple sell a 2 x HDD Mac Mini as their small office server solution, it has to allow admins to get inside to change the HDDs. A set of Torx costs about a £5. Shit, I've spent more than that on a few PoziDrive heads from a builder's merchants.
The Mac Pro shows that Apple can design stuff to be very easy too maintain when they want to.
I'm not sure what the griping is about not being able to get inside a Macbook... when I have laptops from other brands go belly up, there has been nothing I can do to fix them. Since Macbooks use Time Machine to update disk images every day, there is no need to whip out the HDD to recover data, and according to independent surveys, they are pretty damned reliable anyway:
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9230019/Macs_stuck_in_4th_place_on_reliability_support_ranking
The waste that I see across all brands of laptop is not being able to reuse the laptop screen as a monitor once the laptop is dead... though people seem to have enjoyed some success with using the following controller (about £20):
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/5451-Audio-LCD-Controller-logic-Board-AD-ConverterLVDS-DVI-VGA-DIY-1920x1200max-/280996490585?pt=US_Server_Boards&hash=item416cb22d59
Thankfully, us Brits don't have the rates of gun crime that the US does. There are some European countries where there are high levels of gun ownership and yet low levels of gun crime (though they they tend to have less of a wealth gap than the USA, and be more socially homogeneous) so it isn't just a case of more guns = more gun crime.
However, here at the Reg we've heard of people not having the wits to use a sat nav safely... so it seems a bit of stretch to assume that everyone eligible to own a gun in the States has the wits to store and use it safely. I'm not saying all of Jake's compatriots are morons, but rather the US is home to wide spectrum of folk, from the brilliant to the Darwin Award-winning. Alas, it isn't always the idiot who gets hurt by their actions.
I'm not sure why I should be pitied for not being allows to own a gun just to protect myself against idiots with guns. I rather like living in a country where guns are only owned by the police, farmers and rich people in Range Rovers who don't want to rob me. Oh, and I'm free to walk out of my house without carrying ID. Free. Okay, there are some idiots in the inner cities with guns, and some rough drug related violence in more semi-rural areas, but its mostly 'idiot on idiot' and doesn't bother me.
And Jake, some of your posts can read as "You have a black horse? I have a blacker one, and have had since 1977!", which often distracts attention from any of your more valid points.
It's already available for Android... don't know if has the full functionality of the WinPhone version, though that would depend on new games (or downloadable updates) supporting it anyway. You can already get Android apps for specific Xbox360 games anyway- Bungie released one for Halo Reach that gives real-time maps.
http://www.hotukdeals.com/freebies/microsoft-xbox-smartglass-for-android-now-available-free-google-play-1346203
Actually, it seems more akin to what Sony did with the PSP and PS3 did years ago... the PSP would act as a rear-view mirror in Gran Turismo. The PS3 would also stream video to the PSP.
And certain XBOX 360 games, such as Halo Reach, already have Android apps to give you, for example, live maps showing your team-mates' locations. Cheers Bungie!
As for using the hot and loud XBOX for listening to music... no thanks.
NO! Like we don't have enough bloody pop-up windows and notification dialogues when first using a new installation of Windows.
Now, there would an idea - a command that could be entered when installing Windows to the effect of "I've used this operating system, or one like it, before and I'm confident that I can work it out. If not, I'll just ask the internet for tips, I suspect I will have to anyway for troubleshooting info. So please, no sodding balloons"
Jovial exasperation aside, Mr Longland's suggestion is reasonable.
One CRT monitor in my school's IT room used to go on the blink from time to time... it was enormously satisfying to thump it and have it spring back to life, everytime. If only other equipment responded so well to an 'intuitive Human Input"...
And yes, I do know now as an adult that over time this cure would probably have done more harm.
Hey up, what's the state of play with these cheap tablets? Are they still the false economy that they were, or have they improved?
Anyone got any experiences, good or bad? A year ago everyone was recommending the Curry's tablet whose name I've forgotten, but these days everyone seems to be talking about Google and Amazon's offerings, plus BB Playbooks, in the sub-£200 range.
>"I think they are treading a very fine line. They are just about complying with the letter of the ruling, maybe."
Isn't doing precisely this that lawyers are paid to do?
>"...design doesn't warrant the same wide public interest that tech does... ...Dyson was never ask to publish >anything. Why Apple? "
Haven't you just answer your own question? The court ruled Apple had to make this statement in the national media only beacuse the case had previously had so much attention in the press. The judge felt this was proportional.
> If every hotel room featured mandatory USB sockets, the world would be a much better place for everyone.
>Unless you bought a phone that required an adaptor.
Er, every phone requires a cable to connect to a USB socket.
In fact, most hotels have a box of abandoned phone chargers under the reception desk, left in rooms by previous guests... it doesn't hurt to ask the receptionist if you need one!
Shit, Samsung were worst for having umpteen different charging connectors, rarely the same between any two phone models, though at a glance they looked the same.
@Esskay,
Those are valid points, but I wish the 'standard' solution for phones, microUSB, was better. It's okay, but it isn't perfect, and now we will be stuck with for years to come because it is now mandated. It's not suited for docking solutions, has sharp scratchy edges and I still find myself having to look at it closely to determine which way round to use it. Still, its near ubiquity makes up for its shortcomings.
In the time Apple have had one connector, the old 13 pin, us none Apple users have gone through USB B, miniUSB, and propriety cables*, to microUSB. I've got nests of the bloody things, don't know what, just that any given cable isn't the one I'm looking for at the time.
*Camera makers are especially guilty of this, but now most devices have an SD card slot it is less irritating. I think it should be ruled that if you make a weird cable, it should be a weird colour.
My dog chewed through the integrated cable between the PSU and the laptop. In this case, the point of failure was easy to identify and straightforward to repair. Not elegantly, but securely. Fortunately, I think this was just an experiment on the dog's part, and he has never felt compelled to repeat it.
Curiously, my first Linux experience was helping a mate install Mint on an old classic Thinkpad he'd been donated. Quickly reading up on SUDO etc, it all went fairly smoothly, except for the audio- apparently they used obscure sound hardware, according to the forums, and a few things needed to be done in a specific order, IIRC. It took us the rest of the afternoon, but the eventual 'Tada!' test noise was very satisfying.
More recently, I've only used Ubuntu on a few machines, all very novice-proof, except one machine requiring some added text at start-up. If only the applications didn't have such silly names and gave you a clue as to what they did! The naming scheme sits between charmingly quirky and frustrating.
Its amazing how few laptops have a middle 'mouse' button under their touchpads. Pressing both buttons at the same time to simulate a third doesn't really work for me.
Why not add a couple more buttons whilst they are at it, one for zoom for example. And what it is it with sacrificing the left hand edge of the touchpad for a scroll area? Why not dedicate a scrollwheel or second smaller touchpad for scrolling? Okay, thats a half rhetorical question- the answer is cost, and that the people who would most appreciate it will be reaching for their own mouse anyways. Still, I liked the belt-and-braces approach of older Lenovos: nipple and touchpad (with buttons above and below it, including a scroll rocker), and some models even have a pen driven digitiser too!
Well, for the general user, the case for being tied to an OS is weakening, with many PC activities being done through a browser. Networked storage and virtual machines can only contribute towards not really caring if ones next machine comes with a penguin, fruit or a primary-coloured shape pre loaded. For me, this day hasn't yet come and I'm not saying it will tomorrow, but one day..
And I think I've heard of 4G being more efficient with smaller chunks of data, 3G requires a chunk of data for small things like Instant Messaging or somesuch... crazy to think, back in the day when 3G was auctioned off, no one could think what the consumer might use it for other than to watch Match of the Day highlights.
These days, my mate's jail-broken iPhone and a genuinely unlimited Orange data plan meant he had acceptable home broadband for the two weeks it took Virgin Media to see to his new flat.
USB OTG.
It might be ungainly, but 8GB should be enough media for a few days. Not as ideal as a integrated microSD slot, but better, as you point out, than streaming.
For music, I'd be tempted by by a Sansa Clip and a microSD card. Sorry if I sound like salesman for these little things, but they are cheap. The only advantage a phone offers over it is if you have very long music/spoken word files that you want to skip to halfway through.
That's a very good point- there are plenty of laptops out there with what might be called 'overly masculine' styling... being it some Alienware machine, an Asus with Ferrari branding or a ruggedised laptop (though the latter is at least functional, and female geologists / soldiers etc will appreciate just as much as the boys).
It isn't hard to find a PC gaming case that no person with taste (including many many women) would consider for a moment. But then, it depends on whether the individual is installing it in their front room or in their den.
Okay, roughly 1.3 billion people in China = 1,30,000,000
29 million tons = 26 million tonnes = 26,000,000 tons = 26,000,000,000 Kg
So that would be 200 Kg of oil per person per year, so 0.54 Kg per person per day, 540 grams.
Density of cooking oil is about 0.894g/ml.
So that's about 480 ml of cooking oil per person per day, less than a pint. Certainly more oil than I use in a day, but not an impossible amount. Obviously I've made no allowances for wastage.
>Both of those things you mentioned are only of concern if you are a freetard that downloads everything.
No, the Sony rootkit was shown to leave a path for more malicious stuff.
Also, Sony did release a few albums on CDs which deliberately had data errors... Most home audio CD players wouldn't notice, but these CDs wouldn't play on CD ROM drives or the many in-car players that in fact used CD ROM drives. Paying customers not getting what they paid for.
Some cars have a boot that can be unlatched from the keyfob.... I would really like a car that has a shelf near the driver door that can be accessed from both inside and outside the vehicle, so that possessions or shopping can be organised. No idea of how it would work, but I for one would find such a thing convenient.
'Jackass' had a candid-camera routine in which they leave a dummy baby in a chair on a car roof and then drive around, causing members of the public to run after them. I don't mind those lads injuring themselves (or horseplay in general), but I can't approve of that kind of 'boy who cried wolf' stunt. Make fools of the vain and greedy, by all means, but don't mock people's good nature.
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